Yo guys!
It’s Joe here with my most special review for you all!
The Author of The Thing: Zero Day got in contact with me
again to review his new book ‘ Slenderman, Slenderman, Take this child’.
It comes out early next year and as I received a manuscript
version, I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy of the book to slide on my
shelf!
Here’s a quick account of the book:
Young Jemima Collins, a young thirteen-year-old girl, is
crushed when her mother dies in front of her eyes during a freak car accident.
Flying to Germany to hold a funeral for her mother, Jemima
stays with her relatives and crazy Great-Uncle Tomaz, a famous horror novelist.
While staying at her relatives, Jemima finds something in
the woods… A tall figure… telling her to take one of her Grandfathers books and
to burn it…
Jemima, suffering with grief and frustration steals a book
and returns to England, only to release a terrible fate onto her town.
-
First of all a huge, huge thank you is sent to the author
for sending me a manuscript copy of this book!
The author has told me that it is not the final version
and that the final edition of the book will be slightly different, so things I
say in this review may not be the same exact thoughts I or yourself have when
reading the finished copy of this book.
While I’ve been at Uni, I’ve been poorly dabbling through
books and trying to get myself into a regular reading pattern (which hasn’t
seemed to have worked so far, but I’m still trying!)
Once this story arrived and once I started reading it, I
couldn’t stop thinking about it. The way that the author has taken the urban
myth of Slenderman and spun it into a dark, twisted, horrifying tale of
manipulation, trust and murder has really changed the way I viewed the
Slenderman story.
For those of you who do not know who Slenderman is here’s a
quick and brief summary:
Slenderman, a tall, imposing figure who is dressed in a suit
and is always surrounded by black smog, is an urban myth that started in
Germany in the early 1600’s and has branched out globally after the popular and
quite nerve-wrecking game ‘Slender: The Eight Pages’ that was released in 2012,
since then Slenderman has become a house-hold topic that has had people talking
about it for recent years.
It was rumoured to appear near parks that were situated next
to forests or woods (Kind of like the German version of the Bogeyman) and tempt
children into said woods to disappear without a trace.
People have blamed the Slenderman for real child
disappearances, and there was also a brutal murder case founded a few years ago
involving two girls who thought that Slenderman told them to kill someone.
(Google the rest)
Anyways, now we know who Slenderman is, lets get back on
with the review!
The story itself was a warped piece of work, yet enjoyable
and so very intriguing.
I sincerely liked the way that the author can write about
such a well-known story and immerse you in this new light that’s been shed on
it, and make you want to believe that this is connected to the tale of
Slenderman.
I enjoyed how the story was broken up, how new chapters
would start with a excerpt of Great-Uncle Tomaz’s books as an intro to the
chapter, which would explain certain things about Tomaz’s past or the past of
other people – I liked this approach as it gave more background into the
characters and the depth of the story itself become more intense and wider.
The story did creep me out at points, some points I
genuinely had to stop reading take a quick breather and plough my way through
it; the gritty-ness and darkened atmosphere that the author has poured into
this book messes with your perception of the characters.
I remember reading sections twice because I couldn’t believe
that a character could do or say such things.
The writing, to me, was very clever. It was simplistic, but
yet it was very divulging and it shined on each character greatly, there was
not a point where I felt the authors writing focused too much on one character.
The characters that the author created had their own
individual traits and their own ‘identity’; what I mean by that is, that these
characters didn’t really resemble your stereotypical main characters in a
horror story.
The main young girl Jemima wasn’t a trickster who was
possessed, the main cops were not heroes nor were they sincere or honest.
Each character had a light and a dark side, which was
refreshing to see, rather than horror stories that have the classic ‘good’ guys
and ‘evil’ villains.
My favourite character throughout this story would
definitely have to have been Jemima.
Not because she’s the main focus of the book; but because
her character was so complicated and so intense that it made reading the book
more dark and more strange.
Jemima scared me at points honestly.
Overall, the entire book was really enjoyable and a really
decent read, with dark scenes, shadowy characters and a distorted feel!
I would genuinely recommend this book to any Slenderman fan
or any Horror fan, because either fan would enjoy it.
I want to, say once, again a massive thank you to the author
for sending me this manuscript!
And a huge thanks to you guys, for sticking with me while I
struggle my ass off at uni haha!
See you on the flip side guys!
Joe J